Second question answered first:
The reason they are so similar or identical is to help shape your view of those two words and their meaning and to identify what their purpose is. It is also to cause an overlap. These two words sound the same and spell similar so they are easily confused.
To refer to something, it is typically a known, named, identified and in most cases claimed or possessed thing. To revere something is a feeling that leads to your actions and that 'feeling' is un-containable. It is un-claimed and cannot be possessed except by an individual.
Now the first question, this can happen many times in a persons life in both directions, ie in and out of referencing your identity points, feelings and actions and in and out of reverence for them and combinations thereof. When you revere something it is because that is most important to you. Even when it is unselfish.
We all share a first time that references noticeably outweighed our natural born reverence for our life, our six senses, the caregivers around us, peers, the power source of living things, the creation within us and the creation we find ourselves within.
We first become aware of our only reference before we were even born. It was reverence for our new potential and possibilities, even as a pre-born baby we had these sensations.
Typically from age 3 to 6 we start to assemble enough references and validations from those around us, that the references begin to equal or outweigh the reverences. How we handle the ratios of focus on references or reverences is determined by our make-up, environment and influential people in our focus.
You would have to have been convinced early that there is something in your life to notice worth having lasting reverence for.
This can be thought of as the calculating ever outreaching brain and mind to find more and more references. And the always constant nurturing and provider of life, heart rhythms, emotions and actions which never waivers in it's reverence for it's position.
Science is on the calculation, brainy, AWAY team - literally it means knowledgeable about how "to separate one thing from another, to distinguish," related to scindere "to cut, divide" (from PIE root *skei- "to cut, split;" source also of Greek skhizein "to split, rend, cleave," Religion is pretending also. To be on the HOME team. Literally means: "action or conduct indicating a belief in a divine power and reverence for and desire to please it,"
